guerite, I should have been free of gambling.

Thus, in the midst of all that, I preserved a considerable amount of
self-possession; I lost only what I was able to pay, and gained only
what I should have been able to lose.

For the rest, chance was on my side. I made no debts, and I spent three
times as much money as when I did not gamble. It was impossible to
resist an existence which gave me an easy means of satisfying the
thousand caprices of Marguerite. As for her, she continued to love me as
much, or even more than ever.

As I told you, I began by being allowed to stay only from midnight to
six o'clock, then I was asked sometimes to a box in the theatre, then
she sometimes came to dine with me. One morning I did not go till eight,
and there came a day when I did not go till twelve.

But, sooner than the moral metamorphosis, a physical metamorphosis came
about in Marguerite. I had taken her cure in hand, and the poor
girl, seeing my aim, obeyed me in order to prove her gratitude. I had
succeeded without effort or trouble in almost isolating her from her
former habits. My doctor, whom I had made her meet, had told me that
only rest and calm could preserve her health, so that in place of supper
and sleepless nights, I succeeded in substituting a hygienic regime and
regular sleep. In spite of herself, Marguerite got accustomed to this
new existence, whose salutary effects she already realized. She began
to spend some of her evenings at home, or, if the weather was fine, she
wrapped herself in a shawl, put on a veil, and we went on foot, like
two children, in the dim alleys of the Champs-Elysees. She would come
in tired, take a light supper, and go to bed after a little music or
reading, which she had never been used to do. The cough, which
every time that I heard it seemed to go through my chest, had almost
completely disappeared.

At the end of six weeks the count was entirely given up, and only the
duke obliged me to conceal my liaison with Marguerite, and even he was
sent away when I was there, under the pretext that she was asleep and
had given orders that she was not to be awakened.

The habit or the need of seeing me which Marguerite had now contracted
had this good result: that it forced me to leave the gaming-table just
at the moment when an adroit gambler would have left it. Settling one
thing against another, I found myself in possession of some ten thousand
francs, which seemed to me an inexhaustible c